社区黑料

This is the latest roundup in our 鈥淏est Of鈥� series, spotlighting top education highlights from 2019. (You can get all the latest news, analysis and essays delivered to your inbox daily by signing up for 社区黑料 Newsletter)

For years now, we鈥檝e been jealous of Bloomberg Businessweek鈥檚 鈥淛ealousy List鈥� 鈥� the outlet鈥檚 regular tribute to the best news, profiles and scoops published by competitors. (Be sure to .) And for a second straight year, we鈥檙e paying the ultimate compliment in stealing the concept outright, applying it this time to the universe of education journalism. There were so many important, inspiring and incisive features published last year, features and scoops that changed the way we look at education policy and practice.

Below (in no particular order) are 19 important articles we wish we had published in 2019. Hope you鈥檒l help us revive them this morning and share them to readers who would appreciate:

The New York Times 鈥� : In November, The New York Times鈥檚 Erica Green documented the unfathomable level of unmet need among the 30,000 Flint, Michigan, schoolchildren exposed to lead in their drinking and bathing water. The subsequent increase in the number of children diagnosed with neurological or behavioral problems is threatening to overwhelm the city鈥檚 education system, deep in crisis from a student exodus that has reduced enrollment from 50,000 to 4,500 since the 1960s. With teacher starting pay hovering around $35,000 a year, a special education identification rate of 28 percent and no cavalry on the horizon, Green tells us, suspensions, expulsions and dropouts are on the rise. .

Newsday 鈥� : Following an eye-opening three-year investigation, a team at Newsday uncovered how听 across Long Island, one of America鈥檚 most racially segregated suburbs. In Part 11 of the must-read package, reporter Olivia Winslow investigates how real estate agents 鈥渟ell schools as much as houses,鈥� recommending to house hunters which school districts they should buy into 鈥� and which they should avoid. The story is a prime example of how housing policy is de facto education policy, and how discussions of school quality can become a proxy for race. , as well as the .

Los Angeles Times 鈥斕�: Avoiding gangs, gunfire and aggressive dogs while navigating catcalls, bus schedules and former crime scenes are all part of a day in the life of these Los Angeles high school students. Sonali Kohli of the Los Angeles Times documents three students鈥� daily commutes to school, showing how violence pervades their childhoods. While much of the national attention has been focused on school shootings, which are quite rare, Kohli offers a close-up of how everyday violence and trauma affects students, who frequently hear gunshots and pass memorials to fallen friends on the way to school.听.

USA Today 鈥斕�: 鈥淎frican-American girls are often unfairly viewed as hypersexualized, more dangerous than their peers and in need of more control. Educators penalize them for subjective infractions such as 鈥榖eing distracting鈥� or 鈥榟aving an attitude.鈥� They are twice as likely as black boys to be disciplined for 鈥榙isobedience.鈥欌�� USA Today鈥檚 Monica Rhor compiles the research on the disparities confronting black girls who, in addition to the aforementioned biases, are at a young age and of dropping out of school or being held back. The data is damning 鈥� but not so heart-rending as learning how the institutionalized racism affected C鈥檃lra Bradley, a young Texas woman with a tragic backstory. .

The Chicago Tribune 鈥� : There’s no ingenious, groundbreaking premise behind this piece. It’s just an intimate, closely reported, unshakable profile of a black male teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, where fewer than 700 out of 21,000 instructors are black men. Tribune reporter Ted Gregory followed Jonathan White, a mid-career former graphic designer, through his first few months teaching sixth grade in a racially mixed classroom. The story touches on themes that will be familiar to education observers 鈥� the scarcity of teachers of color and the mounting research pointing to their value to black students 鈥� but it succeeds most as a multi-generational portrait of black men striving to lift up their families, their communities and other people’s kids. .

The Boston Globe 鈥斕�: The idea was genius, and so was the execution. A Boston Globe team spearheaded by Malcolm Gay, Eric Moskowitz and Meghan E. Irons contacted almost all of the city鈥檚 from a three-year span to find out whether the reality of their futures was as shiny as the promise. What they found was sobering. Upon graduating from high school, two dozen said they wanted to become doctors, . More than a decade later, 40 percent earn less than $50,000, four have and one prison. Using an interactive layout interspersed with intimate videos, the Globe鈥檚 stories paint a vivid picture of the depth of the inequities between Boston鈥檚 students and their suburban neighbors, as well as the seemingly insurmountable obstacles those multiple disparities create. .

THE CITY & Chalkbeat 鈥斕�: Amid this reporting on the vast special education landscape, THE CITY and Chalkbeat produced a standout piece in September that homed in on the plight of a subset of students: learners with dyslexia. Writers Alex Zimmerman and Yoav Gonen used the recent opening of a school for dyslexic students on Staten Island 鈥� the only public school of its kind in the state, spearheaded by desperate parents 鈥� to exemplify the district鈥檚 failure to cater to these students’ needs in traditional public school settings. It also tied in the broader “reading wars,” and how inconsistencies in how schools teach children to read has only exacerbated the situation. .

The Philadelphia Inquirer 鈥� : Reporter Lisa Gartner investigates a troubling pattern of abuse at the Glen Mills Schools, a prestigious reform school for boys in suburban Philadelphia. Serious violence at the school has been an open secret for decades, with school staff using egregious tactics 鈥� including threats 鈥� to keep abuse under wraps. After the newspaper investigation was published, the state鈥檚 Department of Human Services revoked the school鈥檚 license to operate for 鈥済ross incompetence, negligence and misconduct.鈥� .

U.S. News & World Report 鈥� : The higher education apocalypse is coming, U.S. News鈥檚 Lauren Camera warns. The sudden closure of dubious for-profit colleges gets the most ink, but an increasing number of small, nonprofit liberal arts colleges are closing, and even legacy research institutions are contemplating a future with fewer students. Half of all colleges in the country could close or go bankrupt in the next decade, researchers say. The culprit? A lower birth rate spurred by the Great Recession means fewer future students. Camera centers the story in New England, ground zero for this coming apocalypse, with its glut of colleges and nationally low birth rates. .

ProPublica 鈥� : If, like some, you followed the 2018 college admissions scandal with a mix of sickness and schadenfreude, you might be familiar with some of the players involved: Rick Singer, the private “admissions consultant” who concocted a scheme to bribe college coaches and SAT proctors to get rich kids into Yale, Stanford and Wake Forest; Lori Laughlin, the former Full House star who allegedly paid half a million dollars to win her daughters a place at USC; and Morrie Tobin, the fraudster-turned-informant whose squealing got everyone caught. But you probably haven’t met Adam Langevin. He’s a former high school tennis star who watched a less-gifted classmate get recruited to Georgetown through Singer’s scam. In telling his story, ProPublica’s Doris Burke and Daniel Golden masterfully bring the public corruption of Varsity Blues to the human level. .

The Atlantic 鈥� 鈥�鈥�: This lengthy essay by The Atlantic鈥檚 George Packer was probably the most disputed work of education commentary last year. Exquisitely and tendentiously crafted, it tells the story of Packer’s discomfort with the progressivism on offer at his son’s sought-after Brooklyn elementary school, where gender-neutral bathrooms were instituted with little community input and educators seemed to encourage parents to opt their children out of state testing. For Packer, the heated PTA meetings became a microcosm for a dangerous new orthodoxy emerging in the late-Obama era, nourished by identity politics and petty power struggles. Critics took aim at the piece for caricaturing the goals of New York schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, and it’s fair to point out that the school in question is wildly atypical of the rest of the district. But it’s indisputably, and predictably, a fantastic piece of writing. .

The Washington Post 鈥斕�: 鈥淭he story of Shaker Heights shows how moving kids of different races into the same building isn鈥檛 the same as producing equal outcomes,鈥� Laura Meckler writes. Decades of integration efforts in this utopian town haven鈥檛 meant equal results for black and white students, and small dust-ups over race linger. Meckler, a Shaker Heights native, also weaves in her own experience growing up in the town. .

The New York Times 鈥斕�: An obituary might seem like an odd choice for a jealousy list, but it鈥檚 a beautifully written tribute to a woman who made an incredible difference to the education of American women and girls. Katharine Seelye鈥檚 piece details Sandler鈥檚 work to get Title IX passed, from opportunities she was barred from as a child and university professor, to her work with congressional leaders to pass the legislation, to her efforts to apply it more broadly. 鈥淭itle IX turned out to be the legislative equivalent of a Swiss Army knife,鈥� a friend said. 鈥淚t opened up opportunities in so many areas we didn鈥檛 foresee, and [Sandler] laid the essential groundwork for it all.鈥� .

THE CITY 鈥斕�: New York City’s massive special education system has long been besieged by criticism for failing to evaluate and provide timely, individualized supports to tens of thousands of students. But local outlet THE CITY further exposed the “crisis” in May, with reporter Yoav Gonen conducting an external review and analysis of a state-commissioned report to reveal that special education complaints have skyrocketed in recent years 鈥� jumping 51 percent between the 2014-15 and 2017-18 school years alone. This article also appears to be the tip-off of a diligent and damning reporting collaboration between THE CITY and Chalkbeat鈥檚 New York bureau this year, which has unveiled听 to help students with disabilities and a severely听, among other findings.听

The Marshall Project 鈥斕�: In June, high school senior Spencer Cliche and the staff at The Graphic, the student newspaper of Amherst Regional High School in Amherst, Massachusetts, published an investigation revealing that their school used prison labor to reupholster school theater seats on the cheap. Eli Hager鈥檚 feature in The Marshall Project both celebrates the student journalists who uncovered the practice and examines the ethics of using inmates, who are sometimes paid less than a dollar an hour, to cover gaps in education funding. Within a day of the story鈥檚 publication, the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District superintendent wrote to parents to say the district would not use prison labor in the future. As Hager noted, the students鈥� reporting has the 鈥渞eal-world impact that many adult journalists only dream of.鈥�

The Boston Globe 鈥� : They go to a high-performing school in the suburbs, get good grades, are readily accepted to top colleges and seem destined for greatness. But then the challenges sparked by socioeconomic status undercut their dreams. and Sarah Carr dive into the suburban school conundrum, where hugely successful districts are nevertheless ill-equipped to address wide-ranging inequalities. The Boston Globe illuminates stark data with a robust analysis and the voices of those directly affected; reading this story, we walked away even more committed to check in on students from schools where disparities are less expected. .

ProPublica & Chicago Tribune 鈥斕�: A devastating report by ProPublica Illinois and the Chicago Tribune about the use of school seclusion rooms across Illinois: 鈥淚n the nearly 50,000 pages of reports reporters reviewed about Illinois students in seclusion, school workers often keep watch over children who are clearly in distress. They dutifully document kids urinating and spitting in fear or anger and then being ordered to wipe the walls clean and mop the floors.鈥� In addition to examining public records, a team of reporters interviewed more than 120 parents, students and school officials about seclusion, which was often used 鈥� in violation of state law 鈥� to punish students for minor infractions. The investigation had an almost听听, sparking an emergency ban on isolated timeouts and leading officials to promise reforms to seclusion and restraint practices in schools.听.

The Washington Post 鈥� : As school districts discuss whether to arm teachers in the wake of mass school shootings, reporter Kyle Swenson explores how the decision weighs on educators who sign up. Set in politically conservative Vincent, Ohio, the story features one district鈥檚 efforts to implement the nerve-racking decision to place guns in the hands of teachers. Though arming teachers has become a political flashpoint nationally, the story offers a compelling inside look at how one school district implemented the controversial policy. .

The New York Times 鈥斕�: New York City’s homeless student population is enough to fill Yankee Stadium twice over 鈥� but reporting on this group of 114,000 at-risk students, or 1 in 10 of the district’s 1.1 million kids, can often be simplified to data points and annual reports. Eliza Shapiro from The New York Times took a more humanistic approach, narrating a day in the life of a homeless boy and girl with the help of photographer Brittainy Newman in November. The resulting photo essay, which follows the two students from the moment they wake up until the sun sets, puts a face to the instability and emotional trauma 鈥� but also the resilience and hope 鈥� of homeless students districtwide.听.